Spreading the disease of knowledge. Keeping you informed of the problems caused by the most dangerous threat to our planet... ourselves, and reporting on possible solutions to those problems.

Friday, March 03, 2006

Bronze Age Sky Disc

I was reading an article on DW-World.de, about a 3,600 "sky disc" which was found in Goseck in 1999. A group of scientists have just determined that it was an "advanced astronomical clock".

This got me to thinking. 3,600 years ago, when there was no television, internet, movies, playstation, computers and other such "time wasters", people would spend their time actually looking at the stars, watching the movement of the lunar cycle, studying the changing of the seasons, and being a part of the complex rhythmical cycle which is our universe.

This clock, which scientists studied for 7 year to figure out it's purpose, was made simply by being a part of those rhythms. I envy the makers of this clock for their knowledge. Yes, it would be easy for me to google "astronomical lunar solar cycle" and find the information in minutes that it took them years of quiet communion with nature to figure out. But does that make me superior, smarter, more advanced than them? No, on the contrary, it makes me detached, it makes me an observer, instead of a part of this living breathing cyclic rhythm.